archaeographer

Prospective reflections on 2025-26 Acting with nature — prehistory My new book Archaeologies of Nature: Activating the Archive, written with Gabriella Giannachi, University of Exeter and Turin, is now complete and in production. Open Access — it will be available as PDF in June 2026. We use an archaeology of artworks to probe human relationships with the environment — how people have got on…

A reflection after the Danish H-STAR fellowship reunion, University Southern Denmark, Odense, May 22-23 2026 Last weekend I joined a reunion of the Danish researchers — twenty-five or so of us — who had passed through Stanford’s H-STAR fellowship between about 2010 and 2015. It was organized by Connie Svabo, whom I hosted at Stanford years ago and who has been a close collaborator ever since,…

Here is the keynote I presented at our reunion last week in Odense, of Danish alumni of the Stanford H-Star fellowship program (2010 to 2015). Keith Devlin (H-Star director emeritus) and Connie Svabo of the Research Center for Science Education and Communication (FNUG) at University of Southern Denmark [Link], were our hosts. The program enabled about 50 scholars from Denmark to spend a few…

Svendborg, Funen, Denmark Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Grasund alle Herrlichkeit des Menschenwie des Grases Blumen.Das Gras ist verdorretund die Blume abgefallen

This is part of my long-running commentary on the current state and future of the humanities, including what gets called digital humanities. Nudged by a conference at Stanford There was a symposium at Stanford last week (November 14-15) called “The Futures of Antiquity in an Age of Digital Data and AI”. Credit goes to faculty colleague Giovanna Ceserani for organizing this gathering to examine…

Christina Unwin’s new book Design and Archaeology [Link] has just arrived. A remarkable path-breaking work, this is the synthesis of archaeology, design studies, material culture studies that we have been waiting for – delivered in elegant case studies of textiles, gold-alloy torcs, shale vessels, and a copper-alloy armband from the world of iron-age and early Roman Europe. Here is what I wrote…

Claus Spangsberg at the Rundetaarn, Copenhagen [Link]. With Connie (Svabo) on the last day of the exhibition – Crystalline Memories of Deep Time. Part of our ongoing collaboration around art-science, research-creation [Link], scholartistry [Link], creative-pragmatics [Link] – and mobilized through FNUG, her lab at University of Southern Denmark [Link], and Studio MS at Stanford [Link]. Artist…

Landscape with monument. One of the most photographed trees in the UK, standing alongside Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, east of Steel Rigg by Milecastle 39, in the northern borders of the Roman Empire. October 2020. In the early hours of September 28, 2023, the tree was cut down by Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers. The felling of the tree gained worldwide attention. Motivation? I’ll have…

Høl Strand, Listed, Bornholm, Baltic Sea.

Ripples in the sand of a 330 million year old river delta. In the distance, the steel boiler of the trawler Tadorne, wrecked in 1913. Howick Burn, Northumberland UK.

In the wake, John Constable 1821. [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link] Bathing House, 1813-15, Howick Estate Northumberland.

Epigram — a concept Don Lavigne was on campus last Friday (Nov 21) to give what was a fascinating talk about ancient Greek epigram — short texts inscribed on something, typically a stone, base, offering, tomb, votive dedication, statue. Don didn’t offer a philological account of epigrams simply as texts. Instead he explored a media ecology — interrogating epigram as a particular kind of media…

Poet and playwright Tony Harrison died yesterday. He should be remembered not merely as a poet, dramatist, or translator, but as an archaeological poet of classical antiquity — someone who habitually dug into the strata of Graeco-Roman (and medieval) remains and reworked them not as past history, as inert heritage, but as living material for confronting the urgent tensions of our time. In…

I’m in a symposium about Deep Mapping. A fascinating gathering (Venice and online), organized by Cristina Manzetti (University of Cyprus), and Valentina Mignosa (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH). The topic is an old favorite of mine, developed in my theatre archaeology with Cliff McLucas and Mike Pearson. Here’s my keynote. And here are the abstracts –…

I am in Copenhagen at the annual meeting of the European Science Education Research Association. Here is my summary statement for our session that introduces Creative Pragmatics as a framework for reshaping science education. The world our students face today is not stable, predictable, nor neatly divided into disciplines. It is complex, interconnected, and uncertain. Climate change,…

In the wake, John Constable 1821. [Link] [Link] [Link] [Link] Storebaelt Bridge. Ambient rhetoric — commentary to come.